Friday, April 07, 2017

RUSSIAN NEWS AGENCY HIRES EX-BREITBARTER JUST AS HE TURNS AGAINST THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Okay, this is odd. You may have read this at The Atlantic on Wednesday:

A former Breitbart News writer is launching a radio show for Russian propaganda network Sputnik.

“I’m on the Russian payroll now, when you work at Sputnik you’re being paid by the Russians,” former Breitbart investigative reporter Lee Stranahan told me. “That’s what it is. I don’t have any qualms about it. Nothing about it really affects my position on stuff that I’ve had for years now.”

... Stranahan, who quit Breitbartin protest last month claiming that the site’s Washington editor was preventing him from covering the White House, told me he is launching a Crossfire-style liberal vs. conservative show called Fault Lines With Nixon and Stranahan with liberal pundit Garland Nixon. It will be carried by Sputnik online....

We know that many on the alt-right are very upset by the Syria raid. You can read about that at BuzzFeed, Raw Story, Politico, and elsewhere. But here's a guy who was upset about the reported White House "coup" by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner loyalists before the U.S. missiles fell in Syria -- and he's working for the Russians. So does that mean the Russians aren't pro-Trump anymore? Or that they're only pro-Trump on the condition that the white nationalists are on the ascent in Trump World?

I know that a lot of people think the Syria raid was a phony show of force because the Russians were alerted in advance. But it's also possible that foreign policy really is now in the hands of people who have no interest in treating Russia with kid gloves. Stranahan, like the rest of the alt-right, sneeringly refers to them "globalists."

President Trump is considering a broad shakeup of his White House that could include the replacement of White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and the departure of chief strategist Steve Bannon, aides and advisers tell us.

No more Bannon or Priebus (who's said to have become a Bannon ally lately)? Stranahan has been urging alt-rightist Trumpites to call the White House demanding the reversal of the "coup" ...

... but a purge of Bannon and Priebus is going to make the alt-rightists turn irreversibly against Trump.

And maybe the Russians, too?

I don't think the alt-rightists are genuinely representative of the Trump electorate -- they're one faction, like Bernie-or-Busters on the left, but, like the Busters, they get a disproportionate share of the attention because they're mostly young, white, articulate, and Net-savvy. As I said in the last post, I think most of Trump's voters -- dyed-in-the-wool white-collar suburban Republicans and blue-collar whites -- are happy to see Trump blowing stuff up. But alt-right criticism of Trump will spread, and will weaken him in the long run.